nVidia Project Th-.. Shield (Tegra4)
- Thread starter arijoytunir
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A video from nVidia, so hardly to be trusted as representative. Could be everyone they asked thought this was the greatest product in the last 20 years. Could be almost everyone of those people in the video also said it was an ugly blob and though they liked the feel and features, couldn't see where it'd fit into their life along with their console and smartphone and tablet, and would never buy it. Could also be that 99.9% of everyone who saw and tried the thing though it was a heap of junk and nVidia had to ask thousands of people to find enough to make a promotional video. And it could be that these interviewees are all nVidia shills.
I would be shocked and amazed if nVidia actually tries to bring this to market. It pretty much has nothing going for it. Dedicated handheld consoles are dead and Android games are not on anyone's radar. Plus as you guys pointed out the thing is just too big and too ugly.
nVidia should stop messing around and just come up with a simple device that allows me to use my office desktop as a rendering server to play games on my living room tv. Bring the GRID home.
nVidia should stop messing around and just come up with a simple device that allows me to use my office desktop as a rendering server to play games on my living room tv. Bring the GRID home.
Not only that, it requires a Nvidia Geforce 660 and up GPU. Good luck boxing off your market.
DuckThor Evil
Legend
The reguirement is GTX 650 and up, not 660.
It doesn't require anything of the sort of course, they just set an artificial limit there, keeping everything else out. Another nail in the stupid plastic coffin that is nvidia shield. Just close the lid on the thing and bury it already...
It is not an artificial limit. Something has to encode the frame buffer prior to streaming and encode it fast. What would you have them do - write software and drivers for everyone else's hardware and support it too?
How would you solve that problem?
There's always ways if you got the will. Intel quickpath, OpenCL GPU encoding, and so on. Thing is, if they're going to rely on hardware encode of a small subset of their own products ONLY they might just as well not bother at all, because that tiny segment of the market is so tiny it couldn't support their product even if everybody who owned a geforce 650 and up (660, whatever) also bought an nvidia shield. ...Which they won't, of course.
Maybe they're hoping to sell a few more GeForce cards instead.
The benefit nVidia has with Shield is that regardless of how niche it is it doesn't really have direct competition from another product. Closest thing is (mostly Chinese) gaming tablets but they're in a pretty different league in power and design. Sure, a lot, perhaps a vast majority of people will see this thing as ugly, pointless, impractical, etc but there's going to be some group of people that want this and will pay huge margins to get it because no one else is offering something comparable. This much is obvious based on what a lot of people are saying. The question is if the volume is large enough to justify whatever it cost to develop this, minus what it does to help sell Tegras and GeForce cards, promote software enhancement, and promote the brand.
In theory this shouldn't have been that expensive for nVidia to develop and bring to market. My gut feeling based on what they said about how long they worked on it and how much work it was is that they over-budgeted and over-engineered this which could work out poorly for them, but may at least pave the way for a cheaper successor.
Obviously that's the major drawing point of such a limitation. However I seriously doubt a marginal product like shield would ever be enough to pull in enough additional geforce customers to even make a blip in the statistics.
Yeah, and the reason it doesn't have a direct competitor is because it's so niche. Chicken and egg both at once, you might say.
I think Shield is garbage but streaming PC games to a living room TV has potentially massive appeal. Millions of people play PC games at home and they presumably own a couch and TV as well. There's nothing niche at all about playing games from your couch.
The 660 requirement is a non-issue since every single nVidia GPU design will eventually surpass that requirement. You have to start somewhere.
With respect to portability, OpenCL is not a solution. For streaming to work you have to do a number of things very fast. nVidia is using custom drivers and a hardware encoder on their GPUs in order to capture the frame and encode it with minimum latency.
Are you suggesting that nVidia should write drivers for AMD's GPUs and encoder too? If you were nVidia's CEO how would you design and support a streaming solution that works on everyone's hardware?
D
Deleted member 13524
Guest
(sorry, couldn't resist)
No present from Exophase, though...
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Eh? You take what appears to be one magazine's speculation as to what the price will be and use that somehow as proof of what Nvidia will charge for it?
Um, yeah... They have no better idea than anyone on these forums.
Who knows, maybe Nvidia will backtrack on their own statements that they made to the gaming press. But for now, I'm sticking with my speculation.
Regards,
SB
Um, yeah...
They have no better idea than anyone on these forums.Who knows, maybe Nvidia will backtrack on their own statements that they made to the gaming press. But for now, I'm sticking with my speculation.
Regards,
SB
D
Deleted member 13524
Guest
So I get to mock you guys again when the price turns official from nVidia?
Well, depends on what we can expect from you if you are wrong?
$350 dollars does seem like a small dedicated consumer base :-\
When the price is finally revealed, someone somewhere can be served up hat in crow sauce and everyone else can point fingers and go, "na na".
A1xLLcqAgt0qc2RyMz0y
Veteran
Eh? You take what appears to be one magazine's speculation as to what the price will be and use that somehow as proof of what Nvidia will charge for it?
Um, yeah...
Regards,
SB
So why are you then posting your speculation
that Shield would be priced between $450 and $800? Yours looks to be just a wild guess.Magazines have a long lead time to print so it is very likely that they would have been given the release price for an article that would be published in June.
I trust them more than I-Just-Want-To-Make_Up-My-Own-Price posters.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
So why are you then posting your speculation
Magazines have a long lead time to print so it is very likely that they would have been given the release price for an article that would be published in June.
I trust them more than I-Just-Want-To-Make_Up-My-Own-Price posters.
Um, yes, my guess is just pure speculation, I never stated otherwise.
He posted that somehow as proof of what the price will be. But that was just a magazine blurb speculating on the price just like I did.
There is no right or wrong at the moment because we don't know what the price will be.
At no point have I ever stated that "this is what the price will be." So why get your panties in a bunch?
Regards,
SB
